Off Kilter
by A Green Being
Summary: Jim and Karen come across a very smart perp with an off kilter sense of humor, but are any of the crimes related?
1. Chapter 1

Off-Kilter

Part One

Karen laughed. It was just a little laugh, more like a miniature chuckle, but it was odd to hear at a crime scene. More than odd: Jim had never heard her laugh at a dead body before. He knew very few people who were quite that callous.

"Karen?" She didn't know he was there, standing at the top of the stairs with Hank, not venturing further. The early-morning page from the squad had alerted everyone separately, at home, still asleep, to gather here instead of at the precinct. Jim could guess she hadn't been there long, either. A uniformed cop had just told him the body would be just to the right of the stairs, apartment 2-8, and upon reaching the top of the stairs, he'd heard the familiar rustling of a body bag that had preceded her laugh by a second. There was a click-whirr-winding noise from a camera. Three officers, at least, were around. To the far right a pair were talking quietly, and Karen murmured something, a humorous note to her voice.

He heard the swhfff sound of the body bag being laid back in place and then footsteps on the tile. "Jim, you're not going to believe this," she said quietly. Her body moved within the range that he could feel her presence and smell her perfume, or her shampoo, or both. She was wearing that leather jacket, he could tell by the way it squeaked slightly, a sound that echoed in the hallway, making the hall seem oddly empty, devoid of furniture and pictures, having high ceilings, bare walls, and tiled floors. Sound bounced around with nowhere to land. He always had trouble envisioning ornamentation to rooms, especially when the area sounded so completely bare. "The body? It's already… embalmed."

Jim raised his eyebrows, but waited silently as she filled him in. The body was in the apartment building hallway, where there was access from either end. The décor was southwestern, potted palms, red tile, wrought iron gates that led to outside stairwells on both ends. Nice and bright, well-lit. Nothing else out of place. A couple little alcoves for light fixtures, rounded, like an adobe house, and one large alcove for a few plants, putting them out of the way and concealing a doorway: a closet for maintenance equipment, cleaning supplies, storage.

Karen drew him down the hallway a little to continue her description further from the body. "The widow's here. About fifty. She'd just gotten up and come out for the morning paper to find her husband lying _in the hallway_. Hands folded across his chest. Make-up, lots of rouge and lipstick. Eyes closed. Lips have a little smile. Wearing a, like a smoking jacket, with one of those old-fashioned cravat things. Dress pants, dress shoes. Flower in the pocket of the jacket."

"What kind?"

"Maybe an orchid?"

"So what you're saying is, he's all ready for the coffin."

"Yeah."

Jim let out a breath, trying to picture it all, trying to figure it out.

"Weird, huh?" Karen said.

"He was just lying there?"

"Nah, he was reading the paper."

"ME been called?" Jim asked, ignoring her comment.

"Yeah. On their way."

"You got the photos?"

"Mhm."

"Then let's take a look around the apartment." Jim reached up for her arm, but instead of letting her guide him inside, he pulled her back. "You think he was murdered? Or you think he died of natural causes?"

"I can't tell."

For once he didn't fight her. It wasn't often they got a body gift-wrapped.

* * *

Fisk handed the photos back to Karen. "No clues in the apartment?"

Karen shook her head sadly.

"We couldn't find any sign of forced entry," Jim put in. "Thinking maybe Mr. Feldman left the apartment early—wife said he sometimes runs errands before work—and just didn't come back."

"So if it was murder, there'd be no evidence in the apartment," Fisk summed up.

"Yeah, if," Karen said.

"What's your feel?"

"Honestly?" Karen fidgeted and glanced over at her partner. Jim stood leaning against his desk, arms crossed, head tilted slightly down, as if avoiding eye contact. "I'm waiting for ME before I make any judgment."

Fisk shot her a look. That wasn't normal, for a detective to have no angle, to have gained nothing from the canvass, to not even want to make an educated guess. Detective work was all about running on intuition and guesswork. Waiting for forensic evidence? That was for pussies and reality TV.

"Let's say it wasn't murder," Jim put out, still not looking up. "Say this guy left his apartment that morning. Walked to the corner store. Had a heart attack and died. If it _wasn't_ murder, someone's got a sick sense of humor. I mean, they did everything the mortician would have done. They even sewed his lips shut. Then somehow they carried him back home—guessing they got his ID from his wallet—and left him laid out, delivered with the newspaper. Good Samaritan, did the dirty work free of charge. For what? They were bored? Didn't take a dime from his wallet?"

"So you're saying murder?" Fisk asked.

Jim shook his head. "I won't call that, but I will say it was premeditated. Whoever it was, they knew this guy. They knew his habits. I doubt they just stumbled onto a body in an alley and decided to take it home on a whim."

"Mhm," Fisk agreed.

Jim chewed his lower lip, thinking.

Karen stared at the phone, willing the medical examiner to call.

Tom's voice floated down the hall, arguing with Mary as they got closer. "…saying, couldn't be random."

"Why not?" Marty said, his voice fading in and out. "Helpful neighbor… or a bartender… doesn't want to get involved…. Guy was a freak, already wearing the make-up."

"Address in the wallet was wrong—Feldman hadn't gotten his ID changed yet," Tom said as they rounded the corner.

"There goes that idea," Karen muttered.

"Anything?" Jim asked the other two detectives.

"Nothing," Marty said. "Couldn't find a single person who'd even seen the man leave this morning, or seen him come back, but the wife insisted he was home last night."

"Marty says the guy was a freak," Tom said, sounding amused.

"Marty," Fisk said sternly.

"I'm just saying." Marty shrugged and grinned. "It's more fun that way. Messing with your partner's head; it's not going in the report."

* * *

"…yeah, sure, come on up." Karen hung up the phone and turned to face Jim, who was listening intently to something on his computer. He was hunched forward, staring at the screen, earpiece in, his lips drawn tight in concentration. "Jim?"

He tapped a few keys, pulled out his earpiece, and turned.

"What're you looking into?"

"Normal burial practices. Seeing if everything was followed according to procedure. Was that ME?"

"No. Kyle Boyd, uniformed officer. Heard about our new DOA, wants to run something by us."

Jim grimaced. "Rookie?" Some rookies had a bad habit of trying to solve everything, getting way over their heads, trying to get on the fast track to a promotion.

"Nah. Been here a few years at least."

"He say what he has?"

"Wouldn't say. Sounded kind of embarrassed." Karen leaned back in her chair. "Last I heard from ME was in the middle of the autopsy, nothing yet. The widow insisted they be thorough. If we have to rely on blood tests, that could take weeks."

"Great." Jim leaned back, letting his chair bob for a moment before settling. "I got nothing."

"Yeah…"

"All we got's a body. From a legal standpoint. No motive, no weapon, no clear cause of death. And if he did die of natural causes…"

"You think so?"

"No. But if he did, we got no case."

Karen nodded to herself. If they weren't going to have a case, it would be pointless to spend too much time on it now. They had other open cases they could be scoping.

"Detective Bettancourt?"

Karen looked up to see a man near thirty, young-looking in uniform with a crew cut. "Interview one," she told Jim as she extracted herself from her comfortable chair. "This way," she told Kyle Boyd, who was staring at her chest. She jerked her thumb, the movement caught his eye enough to raise his gaze. But as she led the way, she got the distinct impression his eyes had fallen to her rear.

Boyd carried a stack of skinny case folders, each of which only held a sheet or two, by the looks of them.

Jim settled into place across the table, Boyd by the door. Karen moved over by the window, hoping the bright sunlight behind her would deter him from staring and distracting him from his job. "Well?" she asked.

Boyd slid the folders to the middle of the table, halfway to Jim. "I, uh, I'm not sure your body was murdered. I mean, you DOA." He was turning red, staring at the folders, not the type of cop you wanted to send to send to notify the loved ones of a murder, not the type of cop who had a lot of people skills.

"Okay. Why not?" Jim asked calmly.

Boyd fidgeted once more, then leaned toward Jim intently, finding his audience. "I sort of got stuck with these dead-end weird cases. The nothing cases. But we've had such a rash of bizarre crimes the past few weeks, I'm starting to think they're connected."

"What sort of crimes we talking about here?"

Boyd pulled the files back and opened them one by one to give them the gist.

"Yeah, but—" Karen argued when he was done, picking her words carefully. "Are those even crimes?"

But Jim was rubbing his bottom lip, thinking them all through, analyzing, computing, compiling. "Can we keep these files here for a while?"

"S-sure," Boyd agreed.

There was a silence, then Karen waved him away. "You can go."

He scurried out of his chair and rushed from the interview room like a perp who'd just been exonerated.

"What are you thinking?" Karen asked.

"If Rich Feldman wasn't murdered, we really don't have a crime, right? All we got is someone who took him home and dressed him up. Not exactly illegal."

"Right."

"And each of these police reports, they're not _exactly_ illegal."

"Right."

"But someone's making our precinct into their own little playground. I mean, if they are connected, it points to someone who's bored. And has a terrible sense of humor. And is very smart. They can do their research, then apply it to a new job. Barber. Mortician. Surgeon. Dog walker."

"At best they'll get disturbing the peace," Karen complained.

Jim felt along the table for the folders, carefully stacking them, methodical, matching each corner. "At best we have a very disturbed individual who we can head off before they do a major crime—"

"Something other than making their neighbors really uncomfortable…"

"Or maybe these are all fun little calling cards for something bigger already. Maybe they're little distractions." He stood up, the files in hand, one hand still on the table for orientation.

"Don't you have something better to do all day?" Karen asked, teasing.

"Let's ask the boss if we can call these people in."

"On what grounds? That the "oh my gosh some guy cut my hair without permission" lady is connected to our DOA?"

Jim grinned and followed the table around to the door. "If nothing else, they'll be entertaining."

"If nothing else, Marty and Tom'll give us hell about this for the rest of our lives."

Jim opened the door and waited for Karen to take it from him. "Or maybe they'll want to help, too."

"Yeah," she said sarcastically, "fun for the whole family."

* * *

Karen stepped around the car and up the curb as Jim moved to join her, Hank panting in the back of the car. The apartment of the most recent victim was in an old converted brownstone, but before Jim and Karen could meet at the front corner of the bumper, a woman rushed down the concrete steps. "You're the detectives?" She checked her watch, her eyes wide to the point of being manic. Her hair was short, but fly-away, permed to the point of being an afro, bleached so it was nearly orange-blonde, which clashed with her stylish black leather coat, expensive plunge-cut blouse with tapered collar, and black fitted pants over black pumps. She looked like a hippy—a yuppie hippy.

Jim had his badge out before Karen could open her mouth.

The lady barely glanced at the badge before forging on. "Thank goodness, you made it just in time, I'm on my way to get this taken care of." Her hands both flew up toward her head, making a motion as if the hair were exploding, grimacing as if she were in pain. "I was lucky they'll get me in today. Can't possibly work like this. I just received an e-mail."

Paper fluttered in the wind, sounding like it was being unfolded hastily. Something hit the back of Jim's hand and he reached out, finding the paper being thrust at him. He passed it to Karen.

"Locks of Love, you've heard of them? They thanked me for my donation. It's nice they could use the hair, but the problem is, I didn't donate it. I mean, I guess the guy who did this donated it, but I didn't donate it willingly."

"So—" Karen started.

"This man, I remember a male voice. I didn't actually see him. Okay, I was coming out of my apartment," she said, starting over at the beginning. "I've got my back turned, right, because I'm checking to make sure the door is locked, and something covers my face. I swiped at it, but then, I guess I passed out, because when I came to, I was _inside_ my apartment, like an hour later, with a bleach kit in the trash, and my hair was gone. Two feet of it, although the e-mail says it was 18 inches. Not that I'm not glad I can help some poor kid, but—" She sighed, cutting herself off.

"You wanted a choice," Karen said.

"Exactly. I don't want some guy coming up and forcing himself into my apartment. I'm assuming it was chloroform, right? That's what it probably was? The people in the emergency room couldn't find anything wrong with me. Other than the hair. And the officer there thought I'd done this to myself. They just don't listen to reason, do they? I mean, why?" Again, her hands both flew to her head, but still didn't touch the fly-away hair, stopping just short, as if an electric current were keeping her hands at bay. "I gotta take care of this—you had some questions?"

"You woke up _in_ your apartment?" Jim asked.

"I said that."

"You mind if we take a look around?"

"What for?"

"Maybe there's fingerprints? That box of bleach you talked about. Maybe if the man did this in your apartment, there might be some clue left behind?"

"Right. Look, if I let you in, you'll lock the door behind you? When you leave? I have to get this taken care of."

"Um…" Karen waited a moment to be cut off, but the woman just looked at her impatiently. "Did you get a picture of your hair?"

"Now?" She wrinkled her pert little nose.

"It might be evidence. We'll need a before and after picture, if you have one. There might be something connecting what happened to your hair, to what's happening around the city."

She laughed. It was loud, bursting. "You're joking?"

Jim reached in through the open window of the car and felt around for the camera, then passed it over to Karen, who passed back the e-mail. He folded it and slid it in the pocket of his trench coat. He heard the click and the Polaroid sliding out.

"I'll let you in," the woman said, sounding pissy suddenly, after catching a glimpse of the slowly-developing photo. "And if I find out you've posted that around the police station, you'll hear from my lawyer."

* * *

Karen ended the phone call. "That was ME. Our DOA? His brain was apparently removed through his nose." She sounded confused, but like she wanted to laugh. And be disgusted at the same time.

"Petty theft?" Jim asked.

She groaned. "Nice, Jim."

* * *

Karen looked around the apartment of the second most recent victim. The room hadn't been updated since the 70s, the drapes were drawn, only one lamp was lit. Jim had already settled onto the couch, which had sunk so his knees were higher than they should have been.

"So someone came in while you were gone?" Jim prompted.

"Yes." The man was hidden in the shadows of the room, some old recliner, which he'd sunk into, but his hands were both resting on the armrests.

"Where'd you go?"

"Deli. Down the street."

"And you're sure you locked the door?"

"The door's always locked. You need a key to open it. Lock's permanent. You can get out without a key, but you ain't ever getting in."

Jim nodded and leaned forward a little. "You know anyone who has a key?"

"Just me. I'm very private."

"And you came back from the deli?"

"I got my chips and a little sandwich for the missus. I got the big pastrami for me. We ended up eating in the dark."

"Your wife wasn't here?"

"She gets home kinda late. She wasn't home yet when I left, and she wasn't home when I got back. I flipped the light switch. Nothing."

"The power…?"

"Power was fine. The light bulbs were all missing."

"Were they stolen?"

"Nope. Removed. And hidden. I've only found the one so far."

Jim heard a few drawers open in the kitchen directly behind him in the small apartment. A cupboard opened. "You could buy some more?" Jim suggested.

The man snorted. "It's the principle of the thing."

* * *

The woman sniffled. "My cat—Muffy—died—sent her to the vet to get her cremated…"

"And?" Jim asked.

Karen stared at the little cardboard box next to the fireplace. The woman started crying harder, unable to talk. "It's okay, we're done," Karen said. She hurried back to Jim's side and tugged at the sleeve of his jacket until he finally took her arm. "We're really sorry for your loss." She glanced back at the box in which Muffy had been stashed, fluffy and taxidermed with glass staring eyes.

* * *

Jim settled back into Karen's car, seatbelt in place, German shepherd panting in his ear. "So the only thing in common so far is the intruder has actually managed to enter each house. Without anyone knowing."

"You wanna start a canvass? See if any of the neighbors saw someone?"

Jim just shook his head and listened to the catch as her car started, then rumbled softly beneath him. "None of the victims seem to have any connection."

"So we keep going."

There was something disorienting about the crimes. For the victims, and for Jim as they played through his head. For the victims, so far, they'd all had someone enter their place in the city, like a violation of their haven. As bizarre as the crimes were, they were unsettling. People always expected someone to break in and steal everything, not to come home and find everything rearranged. They expected to get attacked and brutally beaten, not to have someone cut their hair while they were unconscious. In a way, the psychological brutality of each of the incidents was as damaging as the more violent crimes would have been during consciousness. The powerlessness, the fact that someone was blatantly showing them all that they had no control over their own lives, and that anything could happen.

For Jim, it was a reminder of how delicately balanced his life was. As each of the victim's testimonies played through his head, searching for a connection, it kept coming home to him. He had no faces for these victims, and somehow, instead, each crime infiltrated his subconscious to the point where he felt, for a second, as disoriented as if it had happened to him. What if someone broke into his apartment and rearranged the furniture? What if someone nabbed him in the hallway, shaved his head, and changed his clothes? What if someone violated his last wishes for the burial of a loved one? He'd feel like a stranger in a strange land, like he wasn't himself, like he didn't know where he was going, and he'd wonder: _what next?_

The only other thing plaguing him was the futility of the situation. Was following up on these cases going to help anyone? Even if they weren't linked to this morning's DOA, even if one man was breaking into apartments all over their jurisdiction, if they could come up with a connection, would it mean much? Wouldn't their talents be better used actually finding murderers and saving lives?

"What?" Karen asked.

The car eased over to the side of the road, then the engine stopped. Metal jingled—she removed her keys.

"Nothing," Jim said.

He heard the pop of the automatic locks and fumbled finding the handle. This car was as familiar to him by now as his home, but his hand slipped right past the handle and bumped the armrest. He had to stop thinking. Just open the door, step out onto the curb, slam the door, pat the dog. He lost Karen's footsteps as someone down the road honked and swore, yelling out the window.

"Jim?" she prompted, right next to him.

He stepped back, bumping the side of the car.

"What?" she asked, sounding almost peeved.

"What would you do if something like this happened to you?"

"Like what?"

"If someone attacked you—then did the stupidest thing imaginable? Like they were just playing cat and mouse with you. Teasing you."

"I'd get out my gun and shoot them, Jim." She grabbed his arm and tugged.

Jim took her arm and let her lead him down the block where a young man was waiting outside his apartment, sitting on the stairs. Karen described him as a skinny fellow of about 25 with a small terrier of some sort. The man was wearing a long t-shirt and jeans and looked nervous.

"Detective Bettancourt and Detective Dunbar," Karen introduced. "You wanna tell us exactly what happened?"

"Um, yeah, sure."

"Dognapping?" Karen asked.

"Right. I mean, I didn't know what else to call it. I left for a jog. Sparky can't keep up, so I walk him right before work."

Jim crossed his arms and waited for the punch line. "Is this Sparky?"

"Yeah, this is the little guy. So, I mean, there's not an outstanding missing dog report, it was just more weird, and I don't want it to happen again, and maybe it happened to someone else, you know? And if it did, I'd worry. It's just… odd."

"Right," Jim agreed and motioned for him to continue.

The little dog yapped, having a minor conniption. "So I come back and Sparky's on the front stairs here. Right here. Tied up, just like this, right? And he'd been inside my apartment when I left."

"So someone removed your dog from the premises?" Karen asked, trying to sound professional, but Jim could hear a tiny undercurrent of laughter in her voice.

"Someone walked my dog, detective," the young man protested. "Without my permission."

Jim turned his head to cover the smile. He rubbed the back of his neck to help cover.

"It's not funny. I mean, I can see how it could be. But this is my dog we're talking about."

Jim's smile faded. What if someone took Hank? Without telling him? Even if they did return him, Jim'd never be sure they hadn't done something to him, and that they wouldn't do it again. He strained his ears down the sidewalk, hoping for the sound of a panting German shepherd, but of course the car was too far away. He'd have to trust that Karen would keep an eye out.

"Are you sure they walked your dog?" Karen asked. "I mean, maybe they just moved him? Maybe your friends did it? A little joke?"

"No one else has a key to my apartment." There was a scuffling sound, like rubbing feet nervously on the sidewalk. "Look, Sparky won't… go… if we don't go to the park. He can't do it without trees and grass. I mean, when it snows, it's like I almost gotta dig out a shovel and dig a hole 'til I hit dirt. It's almost embarrassing. So I know he… went… somewhere… because sitting next to him on the stair is a bag of… dog shit. Sorry. But it was sitting right there."

"Oh geez," Karen whispered. "Okay," she said louder, "where's the dog shit now? And was the bag one of yours or did the dognapper provide it?"

"It was Ziploc, could've come from anywhere. I don't know if it was mine. Could be."

"And where is it?"

"The cops took it. I mean, they dumped out the poop—they didn't want that—but they took the bag."

Karen sighed and Jim moved over to take her arm. "You mind if we take a look around your apartment? See if the dognapper moved anything when he was looking for the leash or something? Was anything out of place?"

"No, nothing. At least, not that I saw. Right, Sparky?"

Karen moved forward, her body moved up a step. Jim followed, up, step, up. Karen's body pitched forward. Jim held on and pulled her back up. "You okay?"

"Broken step."

The little dog yapped to see such a sport.

* * *

"Nothing. Again."

"Yeah," Jim agreed. He followed her as she carefully traversed the broken steps.

"The last time you looked that absent, you came up with some brilliant idea," Karen said.

Jim smiled a little.

"Nothing?"

He shook his head.

"I have a couple questions. One, how's this guy getting into their apartments. I mean, without being seen, even, but first off, how's he getting through the doors?"

Jim grinned. "Now you're doing it."

"Doing what?"

"Talking like this kid."

"What do you mean?"

"Clarifying everything."

"Oh. Well, second thing I want to know is, who knows all of these people?"

"You wanna call a support group together?"

"Maybe when they give us a list of all their friends and relatives we'll find a match."

"Until then, you're right. This guy's getting into their apartments, maybe he works for some shop that makes keys? And when they get copies made, he makes an extra?"

"Maybe," Karen agreed. "Maybe…" She skirted around something and Jim let his arm slacken for a second before following her movement.

"Let's get a map drawn up first," Jim suggested when they were free and clear on the path to the car again. "Say maybe there's a pattern there."

"And we're only assuming there's a pattern because—"

"If we didn't, we'd have nothing to go on. And people are creatures of habit. I'm having trouble believing this is all random."

"So Officer Boyd might have a point, right? I mean, he's got all these unsolvable cases, though, so what makes us think we'll be able to solve them?"

"And why should we?" Jim asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Who's next? We gotta get you talking like a human being again."

"What do you mean? Am I still talking like him?"

He patted her shoulder comfortingly as he let go of her arm and stepped toward the car. "You'll grow out of it."

"Geez, you sound like my mom. I mean, you don't sound like a woman, I mean—oh god, I am doing it."

Jim grinned and popped open the door.

* * *

Jim stretched out his hand, his shin butting against a low table and preventing him from moving closer to the next victim. "Nice to meet you."

"You'll forgive me if I decline, detective," the man said, his voice low, calm, but bordering on the dangerous side of humanity. He sounded depressed, but like he'd been around.

Jim let his arm drop. "Sorry." He couldn't remember what this guy's complaint was, so he just stepped back until he found the couch with the back of his legs, and slid into the seat.

"Your hand," Karen said.

"Assault, that's what I asked the other officers to take a report on."

"How so?"

"I was attacked. I was unconscious—"

"Where were you?"

"I was in the bar next door. I stumbled and this guy caught me from behind, said he was leaving, too, he'd help me to the door. The linoleum's up in the entryway and I'd forgotten. So dark in there you can't see half the time. The streetlight was out, so I didn't see him even when we got outside. The city should take more pride in its façade, don't you think, detective?"

"So the man who helped you out of the building, he assaulted you?" Jim asked.

"I think so."

"You think?"

"I remember something was pressed over my face, some cloth, but as I turned to look down at this man, nothing. I blacked out."

"And?"

"And when I woke up, I was up here on the couch, with a bandage on my hand."

Jim's brows knitted together. "What'd he do?"

"Cut off the tip of my pinkie. It's not a lot, mind you, but who wants to lose even the slightest bit of themselves? Not that he didn't do a good job. The officers weren't sure if they could take a report on assault, because of the stitches, and when they took me to emergency, the doctors said it was an excellent incision. No bone was removed, just the fleshy part, and part of the nail. They assume chloroform, which they're unsure if that would have been sufficient, had my assailant decided to hack away at the bone, which would have required more tools to round it off, care not to cut the tendons, or to reattach them if they did…"

Jim just stared toward the man, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, trying to picture, not just the finger, but why someone would attack him leaving a bar, take him to his apartment, and proceed to hack off part of a finger. He swallowed hard. "Did the assailant keep the finger?"

"No. It was in the trash. Which was the only reason the first officers here thought maybe I hadn't had this stitched up in a hospital and was so completely drunk that I'd forgotten about it. It's not everyone who has the ability to stitch up their own hand like this, at home. This wasn't just a needle and thread job."

"Do you think you'd recognize the man's voice again, if you heard it?" Jim asked.

"I think so."

"But you had no idea who it was?" Karen asked. "Or even had any inclination that he meant you harm?"

"No, none. And believe me, in my younger days, I ran with a tough crowd. I've been there. Never let your guard down, out with the tough guys, raising hell, getting drunk, getting into fights every night, having loan sharks breathing down my back, not having a phone, never knowing if you'll have enough money to eat, never knowing where you'll sleep that night, or with who."

"So you think, if this guy'd seemed threatening, that you might have noticed?"

"Might have?" The man laughed. "Honey, I would have."


	2. Chapter 2

Off-Kilter

Part Two

"What were you two lovebirds up to yesterday?" Marty asked the next morning as Jim settled in.

Jim slung his trench coat across the back of his chair and took a moment with his back to Marty to compose his thoughts. "Sixteen interviews, Marty, what were you and Tom doing?"

"Bobble-head basketball. Tom's bobble-head doll's head comes off, we got a little hoop we attach to the holding cell, first one to ten points wins."

Jim struggled against a laugh. "Sounds like fun," he said as seriously as he could.

"Yeah, join us next time." Marty's chair squeaked, meaning he was probably leaning so far back to look at Jim that he was in danger of tipping over. "We got a lead in that Bartlett case. You find any leads?"

Jim rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Not really." He quickly pulled out his computer and plugged it into his scanner so he could take a look at those reports Kyle Boyd had left with them. While his system was booting up, he crossed to Karen's desk, carefully sweeping his hand across the top in search of the stack of files. "You see a pile of folders here?" he finally asked.

"Mmm? Oh, no, nothing."

Jim let his eyes close behind the dark glasses. He had to think. "Karen here yet?"

"Nope." Marty sounded distracted, so Jim just settled into his chair to wait. Papers fluttered on Marty's desk, a pencil scratched out words, then clattered into a pen holder. The chair squeaked again. "You shoulda seen your DOA, Dunbar. Really creepy—the only thing he was missing was the coffin."

"The make-up wasn't gaudy?"

"A little. I mean, it looked like something I'd do."

Jim smirked. "You in the habit of applying women's make-up, Marty?"

Marty actually laughed. "No, that's the point. It's something I'd do, just 'cause I wouldn't know how." A clicking sound, like he was tapping something on his desk. "But it wasn't bad. The colors were off."

"Like they'd been bought for someone else?"

"Yeah."

"And we're assuming whoever did this, either killed him, or just dressed up the body and took out the brain, is a man, right?"

"Took out the brain?"

"ME said it looked like a little bit of Egyptian mummification had been added, for fun. And some other ancient burial practices. Incense in the pockets. A small cross in the folded hands. Which weren't quite stiff, so rigor mortis hadn't set in yet, which means the body hadn't been dead long. The guy hadn't just been lying around. Whoever did this got right on it, dressing him up, bringing him back."

"And these sixteen people you interviewed?"

"Are completely unrelated."

Marty laughed at Jim for the second time that morning, but this time it was less comradely.

"Say what?" Tom asked.

Jim looked up, looking surprised to find Tom had joined them. "Unrelated. That's all I can come up with. No connections." He tried to smile. "Back to square one."

"And the ME report?"

"Hard to say much when half the organs are missing," Karen said. "They took out the liver, too, I guess, but that was like a week ago. Which is why ME didn't say anything about it yesterday."

"Hard to live without a liver," Marty said.

"Yeah," Karen agreed, "you sort of need that."

Jim just stood next to Karen's desk, his hands resting lightly on it. "They give you anything else?"

"I stopped on my way in to see how they were doing. Looks like we'll be looking into the blood work next. They can't find any hospital records for this guy, not recent ones, nothing about a major operation."

"What are you saying, someone actually removed his liver a week ago, on a whim, and then followed him around until he died?"

"Maybe. You can live without a fully functioning liver, but you need dialysis and other treatments."

"Is there any chance this guy didn't even know it was missing?" Marty asked.

Karen laughed. "Yeah, Marty, good one."

"Maybe Marty's right," Jim said. "Say he didn't know what happened. He wakes up, he's got a small incision, he remembers being attacked, thinks maybe he's okay."

"And you wouldn't go to the hospital if you found a stitched up hole in your body?"

Jim shrugged. "Okay," he conceded. "Unless he had a reason to avoid going to the doctor."

"Let's call the wife, see if she noticed any changes in his health over the past week or so. ME said he was extremely jaundiced, which didn't show up in the original photos because of the make-up."

* * *

Jim yanked the earpiece out and spun his chair to face Karen. "Karen, remember yesterday, that first woman, her hair was donated."

"Yeah?"

"At the bottom of the e-mail, it said if the hair wasn't long enough, they'd just sell it at market price in order to fund their non-profit organization."

"Yeah?"

"That's just hair. And it brings in a fair price, I'm sure."

"Okay…"

"How much do you think a liver would bring in?"

"A liver? Jim, honestly…"

"We're talking black market here."

"Black market organ selling? Who would want to buy a used liver?"

"I can think of one or two people," Marty cut in, "and not for dinner, either."

"So that's a good reason to cut out a liver, right? To either use it yourself—"

"Yeah, but what for?" Karen asked.

"I just ran across a bunch of transplantation pages. I'd been looking into the possibility of it being some burial practice, but all they removed was the liver. They didn't remove any other internal organs. So what do you do with a liver? You put it in someone who's sick and dying and desperately needs a liver. Trouble is, it needs to be fresh. And you need a matching blood type."

"So we should see if this guy's donated blood anytime recently, and if his blood type's listed in any records that someone could have stumbled across."

"Right."

"But why would someone steal his liver and then sew him back up?"

"So it wouldn't be obvious right away what the cause of death was? To give them time to get rid of the organ?" Jim speculated.

"Okay… I'll buy the live organ donor theory, but, Jim, if they only wanted his liver, why'd they come back and take the brain out later, then powder him up like a pretty corpse? Why would they come back to the scene of the crime?"

"Guilt? Sadism? Trying to distract us? I haven't figured that much out yet. But if money was the motivating objective, maybe we can trace it."

* * *

"Let's see if we can retrace where they brought Rich Feldman back from," Karen said, standing outside the southwestern-themed building and looking up. On the outside it didn't look any different from an old brownstone with balconies. "We got an hour before Mrs. Feldman will be back."

Jim let Hank down from the car. An hour'd be too long for the poor pup to be cooped up in the back of Karen's sedan. "What do we know? We know he was there that night, but the next morning he was lying dead in the hallway. Cause of death is probably the missing liver, which would look like he died of natural causes. No trauma, no murder weapon. And a week later, he's not going to have any evidence on his body of who did this."

"And the wife says she doesn't know of anyone who _didn't_ like her husband. He was an all-around good guy. Everyone always invited him over for tea or coffee or dinner." Karen led the way through the main entrance as they ran over what they knew. "Mailboxes in the lobby here."

"We need to concentrate on _how_ this guy got his liver removed in the first place, if he's so popular. Anywhere an assailant could hide? Big desk? Storage closets?" Jim listened to the room dimensions as Karen moved around the room, her footsteps giving him a reference sound and bouncing off the walls. This room seemed as empty as the hallway upstairs had the day before.

"No, nothing." She headed for the open staircase that led to the second floor. "Wide hallways, bright, a few windows. Pictures of dead cows. Kind of a little orange in here for my tastes."

Karen turned off down the hall while Jim was still in the stairs. They felt wide, roomy. He stepped off onto the tile, hearing footsteps echoing as he turned the corner, but it took a second to realize they were headed in his direction, and that they were too heavy to be Karen's steps. Jim froze just as a body bumped him.

"Sorry," a man said.

"No problem," Jim replied.

"You need help finding an apartment?"

"No, I got it, thanks." Jim stepped aside to free up the path to the stairs, but the man didn't move.

"You look familiar…"

"I get that a lot." He listened carefully for Karen—a slight rustling ahead, maybe the air conditioning was blowing one of those fake plants she'd told him about—but it was like she'd disappeared.

"No, really, you do." The man reached out, sort of rubbed Jim's arm. "I know, you were that cop on the news a couple years ago."

"There were lots of cops on the news a couple years ago."

"Yeah." The man patted his shoulder, then let go. Jim got the impression he was a touchy-feely sort of guy, especially since he kept moving closer into Jim's personal space as he talked. "You're investigating that murder across the hall, right?"

Jim nodded. "You seem pretty sure it was a murder."

"Aren't you?"

"We don't rule anything out."

"Innocent until proven guilty and all that, huh? I see. Yeah, I think I'd think he was murdered."

"Did you get to have a conversation with any of the officers when we were over here yesterday?"

"Nah, but my partner did. Bob. We live together. He's a drag queen. The cops pulled a quickie on him, if you know what I mean, talk about homophobic."

"So what do you know about Rich Feldman? He and his wife get along? He have any health problems?"

"Health problems?"

"Routine questions."

"Why don't you come in a minute, have a seat, take a load off. I was just going to get the mail, but that can wait. Let me play hostess. Bob always gets to do it, but he's out right now, so this is my chance." The hand ran down Jim's arm again. Jim realized, a couple years ago, he'd have hated the way the man kept making contact, but now, he was so used to relying on that one-on-one contact to get around that he didn't mind. It was a way for him to connect with his environment and the people in it, probably the same for this man, too.

"Sure." Jim prodded Hank to follow the man. "And your name…?"

"Ed Gaines."

Jim smiled to himself. "Almost like that serial killer."

"Yeah, I get that a lot. My last boyfriend broke up with me because he thought I'd start pulling his skin off and making chairs out of it."

Jim stopped behind the man, listening as a key slid into a lock.

"Could your dog stay out here? Bob's horribly allergic, so he says. I think he just doesn't like the dog fur on the sofa."

"No problem." He motioned for Hank to stay, then took the door that Ed passed back.

* * *

"Thanks," Jim said and shook Ed Gaines' hand as they both left the apartment. It had smelled odd in there. Heavy on the women's perfume, but with some underlying medicinal quality Jim couldn't quite place. He wanted to say formaldehyde, but who kept that on hand?

"See you around," Ed said. "Without Rich, we might be looking for a fourth for bridge night." The man took off down the hall, wearing some sort of boots with hard soles, maybe cowboy boots, matching the décor.

Jim waited until he'd disappeared down the stairs. In the silence, he could hear the footsteps all the way down the hall, down the stairs, the way he jumped off the last one, sounding satisfied, or maybe just excited about something, and then he heard the jangling of keys, the squeak of a mailbox.

What he couldn't hear was the panting of German shepherd breath.

His heart clenched. His stomach pitched. If there was a connection between Rich Feldman's death and the dog walking crime, had someone taken Hank? Was he sitting on the front stoop waiting? Was he missing? Had they fed him table scraps? "Hank?" Jim asked cautiously, hating the way the tile floors and high ceiling reverberated his voice.

"Jim," Karen hissed.

He turned in her direction. Was she okay? She'd sort of just disappeared there.

"Where've you been?" she whispered. She tip-toed over and stood by his side.

"Interviewing the neighbor. Where've you been?" he countered.

"Look what Hank found," she whispered.

Jim took her arm and followed until he got a face full of fake plant. He ducked, pushed it aside, and continued following her, behind the plant, into the alcove, through a doorway. Silence. The room felt closed-off compared to the rest of the building. He could smell cleaning supplies and sounds didn't echo in here, probably because the room was packed, every wall covered, negating the free space sound waves needed to bounce back. He could hear doggy breath and reached out a hand, touching Hank on the head. "What'd you find, boy?" he asked.

"We missed it the first time," Karen whispered. "We weren't exactly looking for a brain in a dirty bucket of mop water…"

Jim spun toward her. "You're kidding."

"I hope you don't mind I used Hank as a police dog."

"No, no. You found the brain?"

"I mean, yeah, I think so. It's a little worse for wear, mind you. Bits and pieces floating in the water. Gray, the same color as the water, looks sort of like debris, and since we weren't looking for a brain the first time around…"

"You call forensics?"

"Yeah." He was standing so close he could feel her move to check her watch. "As soon as they get here, let's go have our conversation with the wife."

Jim grimaced. "You gonna ask her if she knew her husband's brain's been floating around in the cleaning bucket across the hall all night?"

"Jim," Karen said, that disgusted tone in her voice she often used to cut him off.

* * *

"So let's say Mr. Feldman got up to run an errand," Karen said, leaning against her car next to Jim in the parking lot of the Feldman's apartment building.

"Half-dressed?" Jim shook his head. "Let's say he didn't plan on leaving the building."

"Okay. Unlike the other cases, the perp didn't enter the apartment."

Jim shook his head again. "Let's say these aren't related."

"No?"

"No."

"You thought they were."

"I was wrong."

Karen snorted. "You gonna ever share that with me, or you just planning to let me keep going down the wrong path 'til the case was solved?"

Jim shrugged it off. "We got our dead body now, we got the brain. And it seems like that supply closet's looking like our crime scene. It's not all that likely someone broke in, stole the mop bucket, filled it with the brain, then put it back."

"Okay."

"So Mr. Feldman never made it out the door. And the only connection our DOA seems to have with those other cases, is someone with a sick sense of humor. Our perp and those perps did their homework. Ours researched how to get a brain out of a dead body—"

"And how to remove a liver. Assuming, of course, that it was related."

Jim smiled. "How could it not be related?" The late afternoon sun finally peeked out, warming his face. It had been cloudy most of the morning, but he hadn't really noticed until now, until the sun made itself known.

"But you don't think it's the same guy did the other 16?"

"Only if that guy finally did elevate to killing someone, and I was right about trying to head him off. But I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Karen…"

"Why not?"

"Because… There's just no connection. There's no _reason_ for there to be a connection. And it looks like all we gotta do is follow this path to find our perp. We don't even have to look at those other crimes." The sun disappeared again, the warmth went away.

"So whoever killed him, you think they were already in the building?" Karen moved away a little.

Jim nodded. "They seemed to know enough about his patterns to remove his liver. I don't think it's a stretch that they were waiting for him."

"You think we got us a doctor who went bad?"

"Or someone who never quite graduated medical school."

"You think they could have just looked it up on the internet and figured out from that how to do this?"

Jim laughed. "And have the guy live? I don't think so."

"No?"

"Karen, it's gotta be someone who knew the basics. They obviously didn't want the guy to die right away. They would have had to know what to cut and how to pack it if they wanted a decent price for transplantation."

"I dunno…"

"Come on, Karen, the only evidence we have is an empty box from hair dye and a bag of dog shit."

"…so the jury might not like our evidence box…"

"Karen," he said, imitating her disgusted tone of voice that she often used on him.

* * *

Jim and Hank followed Karen back from the bodega near the Feldman's toward the car. There was a tapping sound near the roof of the next building that Jim associated with the city, with pigeons, with a slight breeze, and with the park.

"Birds sound like they're made of wood…" Karen muttered.

Jim nearly snorted his coffee.

"Really, those pigeons—"

"I heard them."

"Like a board thumping, or like knocking two sticks together. But when you look up… it's a bird."

Jim nodded absently.

"Things aren't always what they sound like," she continued, unknowingly preaching to the choir.

Jim turned away. She didn't have to know how many times the rain on the windows had mimicked everything from white noise to a knock on the door to gunfire. He nudged Hank ahead, ready to give in for the evening.

"So—" Karen caught his arm— "let's say our guy isn't trying to distract us. Let's say this isn't random, these crazy things that keep happening."

Jim set his jaw, refusing to be caught up in her enthusiasm. "If it's not random, it's related. And we haven't found any connection between the victims or the sites of these so-called crimes." He'd long ago given up the connection between the crimes Kyle Boyd had sent up and their DOA. They'd spent two days chasing down victims, researching, making maps of the crime areas, trying to pin-point a connection.

"What about the crimes themselves?"

Jim shook his head and listened to the wooden clacking of another pigeon taking off into the wind.

Karen touched him again on the arm. "I'm serious; I'm not letting go so easily."

"Karen, we followed up those crimes. How could they possibly be related to Feldman?"

Karen led Jim to a little touristy restaurant near the car where they could sit outside and talk.

"You're hungry," she said.

"It's time to head home, Karen." He set his coffee down on the table and checked his watch. With the constant cloud cover, he couldn't tell if the sun was still up, but it was already after seven.

"Sit," she ordered. "Get some food in you, you'll be less irritable."

Jim grinned. It wasn't often Karen called him out, but when she did, he listened. He settled onto the hard metal chair, the flapping of the umbrella over the table gently massaging his senses. It was a quiet, calming sound, cutting through the louder sounds of the city going on around them, cutting out the sounds of traffic and cell phones and pedestrians.

Karen started laying it out as soon as the waiter had disappeared inside. "Say these are all connected somehow. We got us a DOA. And leading up to that, we got us someone who's practicing what? How to change appearances. We got a guy playing with some girl's hair. We got a guy practicing incisions and sewing them back up—minor surgical stuff. Or major, if they also did the liver. We got a guy doing make-up on a corpse."

"Why'd they remove the brain?"

"I don't know yet."

"Okay, keep going."

"So let's say the ultimate goal is, someone wants to change what they look like. Like some smalltime criminal, or—"

Jim's hand hit the table a little harder than he'd planned. He stopped her. "Wait. That's it. You're right."

"I'm right?" She sounded skeptical all of the sudden.

"But it's not some little crime boss looking for a little anonymity. What if… while you and Hank were off having fun looking for body parts in the closet, I was talking to Feldman's neighbor. Ed Gaines. Whose boyfriend has been looking into sex change operations."

"What's that got to do with our DOA?"

"They're neighbors. They would know exactly when Feldman leaves his apartment, where he goes, how long he's gone. He could have gone out that morning to get the paper—it couldn't have been delivered after or the paper boy would have noticed the body and called it in—and his neighbor just happens to be peeking out at the same time. They're all buddy-buddy; they play bridge together. Nothing out of the ordinary—hey, Rich, how's it going, come here, you feeling okay?"

"Okay…"

"Gaines said that sort of elective surgery is really expensive," Jim explained.

"And you're thinking they decided on the DIY kit? At home in your spare time?"

"These hits on the city weren't random, but they didn't want anyone getting suspicious and connecting them."

"So connect them for me," Karen said, sipping a lemonade, slurping more like it.

Jim swept his hand across the table, a wrought iron mesh deal, until he reached the silverware. He really was hungry. He set everything on his side of the table in order, carefully positioning it, ready for the waiter to bring their food, as he bounced ideas off of Karen. "Marty said Feldman's make-up wasn't his color."

"Marty said this?" She sounded amused.

"Yeah, he said the colors were off. Meaning, the make-up had been intended for someone else, and hadn't been bought especially for this occasion. Did you get to talk to the neighbor—Bob—during the canvass?"

"Yeah… I think so. Gay guy across the hall? Guy with long blond hair?"

"Yeah, him." Ed Gaines had briefly described his boyfriend to Jim when prompted.

"Would it be possible the make-up was for him?"

"You mean, for his complexion? Yeah, I guess so."

"And the original hair color of our most recent victim—was it similar to Bob's?"

"I dunno—Bob's hair was dyed. Couldn't tell."

"So hers turns orange. That means, don't use that color."

"His was blonde—definitely not orange."

"And dark colors are harder to cover up."

"Right. You think they were practicing dyeing hair on our victim?" She sounded more intent than skeptical.

"I think we need to have another conversation with the friendly neighbors."

"But wait—what about the dog walking? And the light bulb incident? How are those related to a sex change operation?"

Jim grimaced. "Well…"

"Exactly."

Jim removed his sunglasses and rubbed his forehead. There were too many crimes for them all to be immediately obvious, but there was nothing tying each of those crimes to each other, either. Meaning, they weren't necessarily related. Not everything had to go back to Feldman and his neighbors. "Let's say, the neighbors didn't have to come back and dress him up. They did that for fun, right? Maybe once they started these bizarre crimes, they did the others for fun?"

"You know, homicide was sure boring before you joined the squad, Jim."

"You think it's my fault the DOA was embalmed?" Jim raised his eyebrows.

"Um…" the waiter said, sounding a little disturbed, "who had the scallops?"

* * *

"Where's Bob?" Ed asked. Karen had called him into the squad for an interview, along with his boyfriend, and then separated them.

"Interview room down the hall," Karen said. She flipped to a clean page in her notebook. If Jim and her were on the right track, this would be an intricate evening.

"Why?"

"We got a couple questions for him."

"About what?"

"About your neighbor." Karen noted that Ed didn't look all that nervous. He was looking around, mostly curious. His eyes kept flicking toward the door, and each time they did, he looked a little concerned.

The door opened and Jim stepped in. He'd been briefing the lieutenant and the other two detectives while Karen catered to the kooky couple.

"Ah, you again, more follow-up questions from this afternoon?" Ed asked, smiling up at Jim.

Jim leaned against the window. "Exactly."

"Such as?"

"Such as why you have formaldehyde in your apartment."

"Just taking a little correspondence course in taxidermy."

Karen stared at the man. Taxidermy? That checked another of the crimes off their list. "How's that going?"

"Bob likes his coffee with real cream. Not the fake stuff. You guys got that?"

"He asked for tea," Jim informed him.

"Tea?" Ed shifted nervously. "I just want to make sure you're treating him okay. I'd do anything for him, you know."

"He's fine. We're just asking him some questions," Jim said. He moved forward and sat on the table next to Ed. "You okay with that?"

"Sure."

"And you know, he asked for a lawyer first thing. Would you know why?"

"Bob did?"

"Yeah, Bob did." Jim nodded down at him, sunglasses in place. "What we want to know is, what's Bob got to hide?"

"Bob's not hiding anything. Bob's the most straight-forward man I've ever met. What you see is what you get. Well, it will be, after the operation is taken care of."

"About that," Karen said, "you said that's kind of expensive. How are you taking care of that? You're a web designer, right?"

"Yeah."

"And Bob, what's he do?"

"He's out of work right now."

"We got his transcripts," Jim put in. "From medical school."

"Yeah, he didn't finish. They do these little mock-ups where they have people come in and play patient and the students play doctor, and they always went badly. The patients didn't want to tell Bob what was wrong."

"Why not?" Karen asked.

"They were prejudiced."

"Would Bob try to get revenge for that prejudice?"

"No. He's not like that."

"And you?"

"No."

Jim got up and moved away again, distancing himself, leaving Ed alone at the table. "What we want to know is, why would Bob kill Rich Feldman? You all were friends. You played bridge together. What's he got against Rich?"

"…Nothing."

"No?" Karen asked.

"No."

"Then why'd he do it? Dr. Feldman worked at that hospital, right? Where Bob was going through clinicals?"

"Yes, but—"

"And it just happened to be a coincidence that after Dr. Feldman took sabbatical, you and Bob just happened to move across the hallway?"

* * *

In Interview Room Two, Marty stared at the bearded man with the breasts and long blond ponytail. He'd seen his share of drag queens, but never one who still had a beard.

"I'm growing it out for electrolysis," Bob explained. "I'm tired of having it waxed."

Marty grimaced.

"What we want to know," Tom said, "is why Ed Gaines decided to kill Rich Feldman."

"Ed wouldn't kill Richie. Ed loved the old geezer." His voice was very deep, and he drawled his words out slowly. "He say he killed the bastard?" Bob smiled slowly and scratched at his beard.

"Not yet, not in that many words."

"Here's what we got," Marty laid out. "We got us one dead man. We got your apartment, full of formaldehyde. We got a large deposit last week into your bank account from some unknown source. And we got your boyfriend running willy-nilly around the city like he's lost his mind, dyeing women's hair, make-upping dead men, walking dogs without permission. What's his mental capacity like at home? He seem a little odd lately?"

Bob sighed, a very long, a very motherly-type sigh. "Ed's gotten a little odd lately, yes, but that's nothing a little therapy won't fix. He's just got it in his head that my operation's the thing that'll fix everything, and… he wanted to do it himself. He doesn't understand about hormone treatments and complications of surgery. He'll get over it. I've been trying to get him into therapy—maybe a court order will help him see the light."

Bob explained how Ed had been practicing incisions on himself before he went out and cut the pinkie finger of some man he'd met in line at a bar. How the woman had similar hair to Bob's, and how Ed wanted to be the one to help take care of Bob's long hair, because dyeing hair is an intimate thing no beautician should have the right to do. How Ed had been dying for a dog and borrowed one to take for a walk to show Bob they could handle it.

Marty just stared. "He was going to do… it… himself?"

"Using my medical expertise, of course. But yeah. And he didn't like it when I said no. He thinks I don't trust him."

* * *

Ed smiled. "I was just practicing breaking into places. Picking locks. This guy was an old colleague, quit because of paranoia, and he's been living off welfare and off his wife so he doesn't have to leave the house very often."

"So you hid his light bulbs because…?" Karen asked.

"Because I had to do something! If I didn't, he'd never know anyone had been in his apartment. But I didn't want to steal anything."

"That's still trespassing."

"So I'll probably get community service." Ed shrugged it off.

"What about everything else? The judge is going to look at everything you've done and make a decision cumulatively."

Ed's jaw jutted out, his relaxed demeanor changed, and he straightened in the chair, looking up at Karen. His eyes widened as he insisted, "But I did it to stop Bob! I'm helping people here!"

Karen grimaced and glanced up at Jim, who had been staring out the window for the past ten minutes, just taking it all in. "What was Bob doing?"

"I figured if I could do the operation for him at home, he wouldn't need the money for one in a hospital. But he was obsessed. He followed Richie—I love Richie, he's a great guy—and I knew Bob was going to do something to him. So I was trying to give Bobby an alternative." Ed looked up at Karen with eyes full of love and a small smile. "I didn't know Bob had already done something to him."

"But you honestly thought you could do an operation at home without any medical training?"

"Bob has enough medical training. He taught me some things." Ed pulled up his pant leg to reveal some stitched scars. "See? I was practicing on myself, but I thought I should practice on someone else, because it would be different."

Karen glanced up at Jim again, wishing for a moment that she were the blind one, that he had to see all this instead. She could see how his forehead was creased, how he was concentrating on memorizing every word.

"Bob sold Richie's liver to pay for the operation. I didn't know he'd already done that. I had it all planned out. We were going to be a quiet little couple, live peacefully in the city of joy with our little dog. But Bob didn't want a dog. And he was going back and forth between how much of the operation did he want to go through. Keep the penis or not, so I worked it out—if I learned some taxidermy, it'd still be there, technically."

"Gonna keep it on the mantelpiece?" Karen tossed out in defense of her own sanity.

Ed glared at her. "We don't have a fireplace. We couldn't afford the apartment with one."

"So which one of you found Rich Feldman at the end?"

Ed lowered his gaze. "I did. I hadn't realized Bob had already gotten to him, but I found him lying half in the hall, half in his apartment. And I knew you'd just trace it back to Bob immediately because of the medical school relationship. So I thought, if it looks like someone killed him… in order to practice some ritual of burial… then the finger would point somewhere else."

"That's when you decided to remove his brain?" Karen asked. "Instead of calling for an ambulance?"

"I ran inside to call an ambulance, but Bob was there, and he said there was nothing I could do, and he told me about the liver. So I really quickly found a website that explained how to remove a brain, like the ancient Egyptians did, and I drug Richie into the storage closet so no one would see him."

"He was already dressed like that? Dress shoes and a smoking jacket?"

"Yeah."

"And the make-up?"

"He looked so sick… I had to do something. He just looked so sick…" A tear slid down his face. "Bob's not coming home tonight, is he?"

* * *

The squad room was silent. They had paperwork to fill out, and a sense of foreboding. How could anyone get so off-kilter as that? Both Bob and Ed had gone so far past the point of "this is a good idea" that it was hard to see where their realities had skewed originally.

"You guys did good," Fisk said quietly as he shut his door. "17 cases closed in one day."

His praise was met with silence, as were his footsteps as he headed for the elevator.


End file.
